Staying on Top When Your World's Upside Down

Your trajectory is more important than where you are at any point in time

“Encountering obstacles after we’ve made a determination [to achieve a goal] isn’t just an indication we’re making progress. It’s often the very thing required for victory.”Alex Lickerman MD: The Undefeated Mind: On the Science of Constructing an Indestructible Self

During times of trouble, we often think of life as being more like a snap shot than a motion picture, and implicitly assume that things will never get better. If your life has generally been improving over the past ten or twenty years, but you’re going through a rough spot now, there’s no reason to assume the upward trend will not resume, so long as you don’t quit and give in to self-pity and victim-itis. However, you also must be honest with yourself. If things have been steadily deteriorating for years and now you are in a crisis, it’s a safe bet that things won’t change unless you change.

Remember how at the outset we used the rocket ship illustration to show how a small change in direction can, if sustained over time, result in a huge alteration of the ultimate destination? This is a good place to remind your participants that times of difficulty and adversity are often where the greatest opportunity lies to alter your trajectory – to make those changes for which you simply cannot find the courage or motivation when things are going great.